Looking for a trip cancellation only plan?
Stop looking. Trip cancellation only plans are not available. Neither are trip interruption only plans. All trip cancellation / interruption travel insurance plans are package plans that include some (or a lot more) medical, emergency evacuation, luggage, travel delay and other common coverages.
Here are the 2 parts of a trip cancellation travel insurance plan:
Trip cancellation coverage (before you leave on your trip): you, a close family member or a traveling companion gets hurt or sick before you leave (and your doctor advises you against traveling). Travel insurance reimburses you the money you lose. This is especially important if you’re concerned about a pre-existing medical condition. Trip interruption coverage (after you leave on your trip): you, a close family member including a non-traveling family member, or a traveling companion gets hurt or sick while you’re on your trip and you have to return home early. Travel insurance reimburses you the unused value of your trip plus pays the cost of one-way airfare up to its limit.
How does trip cancellation travel insurance work?
You book a cruise, tour or other trip that requires you to pay money up front. Sometime before the trip, the money you paid becomes all or partially nonrefundable. What I mean by nonrefundable is, that if you were to cancel your trip, you will not get any cash refunds.
How the trip cancellation benefit works:
Let’s say, you and your spouse paid $5,000 each for a trip to the Galapagos Islands. Two days before you’re supposed to leave you’re going out to get the mail and you get hit by a cement truck. In my examples, no one ever dies, but if you are hit by a cement truck i’m sure your doctor would advise you against traveling.
The fact that your cancel your trip just two days before you were supposed to leave, means that it’s highly unlikely you’re going to receive any refund on the $10,000 ($5,000 each) you paid for your trip. However, if you had bought a trip cancellation travel insurance plan some time in the days or weeks or months prior to being hit by a cement truck, and had insured your $5,000 per person trip cost, your trip cancellation travel insurance plan will reimburse you 100% of the money you lost on the trip, or in this case the full $10,000.
However, let’s say you only insured $3500 each of your $5,000 per person trip cost. In this case, the maximum amount of money you will receive from your trip cancellation travel insurance plan is $7,000 ($3,500 each), which is the maximum cost you had insured.
How the trip interruption benefit works:
You get to South America safely and this time, your brother-in-law (who you’ve never really cared for), is going out to get the mail and he gets hit by a cement truck. Even though you’re sure he deserved it, out of respect you and your spouse cut your trip short and return home early.
Returning home means your interrupted trip will have some unused value as will your return plane tickets. Plus, you’ll have to buy an expensive one-way last minute ticket home.
For the purposes of this example, your unused trip will be worth $3,000 for each of you. If you had insured your full $5,000 per person trip cost, your trip cancellation travel insurance plan will reimburse you up to $5,000 (and on some plans, a maximum of $7,500) of the money you lost on the trip plus the cost of the one-way last minute ticket home.
The maximum reimbursement depends on the percentage of trip cost you plan covers for trip interruption. Some plans state it as 100% of trip cost, while others cover as much as 150% of trip cost.
I hope this makes sense to you. If not, post a comment here or contact me and I’ll do my best to help you understand trip cancellation travel insurance.
By: Steve Dasseos
Posts Tagged ‘Trip Cancellation Travel’
Trip Cancellation Travel Insurance
December 20th, 20095 Important Trip Cancellation Travel Insurance Claim Tips
December 1st, 2009
When you buy trip cancellation travel insurance, you want to be sure the travel insurance pays your claim. Here are 5 things you can do to help your travel insurance claim be processed quickly and correctly:
Tip #1: If you get sick or injured prior to or on your trip, it’s important you go to a doctor. If you don’t go to a doctor, the insurance company won’t believe you were sick or injured. Here’s how the policies typically read:”For Trip Cancellation benefits, an actual examination by a licensed Physician must take place before the cancellation is made. For Trip Interruption benefits, this examination must take place during Your Trip.”
Tip #2: A lot of information is required when making a claim, even a small one. Keep a log of people spoken to. Don’t forget to keep receipts issued for services including items purchased if you have a travel or baggage delays.
Tip #3: If you ever need to file a claim, write a cover letter with a synopsis of your claim to send with the claim form.
Tip #4: Keep copies of everything you submit with your claim forms. You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t keep a copy. And, those are usually the ones whose paperwork seems to get lost in the mail!
Tip #5: If you look at a travel insurance claim form (or any insurance claim form), you’ll see there’s never enough room to fill in the doctor’s information. Nor is there room to put the prescription information. Photocopy the doctor’s business cards instead of trying to write them all on the form. And do the same with your prescriptions.
In addition, travel insurance plans give you assistance services including the use of a multi-lingual 24-Hour Emergency Hotline, which you can call collect from anywhere in the world.
Here’s an important tip when calling the 24-Hour Emergency Assistance Hotline: Before you call them, get a phone number where you can receive a call. That way, if you are either unexpectedly cut off or you are incurring charges to make the call, they can call you on their own dime (at their own expense).
By: Steve Dasseos
Medication Changes and Travel Insurance – Pre-Existing Medical Conditions Coverage
November 11th, 2009
Medication changes or adjustments can cause a stable medical condition to be classified as a pre-existing medical condition under many travel insurance companies plans. Now, I don’t mean to say that all travel insurance plans throughout the world work exactly like I’m going to explain it. I only work with 6 trip cancellation travel insurance companies mainly because I don’t think it’s possible to know the details of scores of different plans.
Also, before I go further into this subject I just need to say that what’s commonly known as travel insurance really has two different categories:
- travel health / medical insurance
- trip cancellation / interruption travel insurance
While nearly everybody thinks that these kinds of plans are the same, in reality they’re not for a few different reasons. So, with the purpose of trying to help you avoid likely claim problems with “travel health / medical insurance plans”, here is what we say:
“Pre-existing conditions are not covered. A pre-existing condition is defined as any injury, illness, sickness, disease, or other physical, medical, mental or nervous condition, disorder or ailment that, with reasonable medical certainty, existed at the time of application or at any time during the three years prior to the effective date of the insurance, whether or not previously manifested or symptomatic, diagnosed, treated, or disclosed prior to the effective date, including any subsequent, chronic or recurring complications or consequences related thereto or arising therefrom.”
I won’t bore you with all the other differences between these types of plans, since I am only addressing changes of medications and pre-existing medical conditions.
Back to the trip cancellation travel insurance plans. Typically, these plans have a Lookback Period of 60 – 180 days prior to the date the travel insurance is purchased. If the person’s medical condition has been diagnosed, treated, received advisement on, had symptoms of or changes or adjustments in their prescribed medication during that Lookback Period then most companies will define that medical condition as a pre-existing medical condition.
Having a pre-existing medical condition doesn’t mean you can’t get travel insurance. It just means that order to get coverage for that pre-existing condition with a trip cancellation travel insurance plan, you have to purchase the insurance within the specified deadline to receive the waiver of the pre-existing medical conditions exclusion. Here are the four rules that you need to follow:
- With a few exceptions, you have to insure at least your trip’s full prepaid, non-refundable cost (you can’t round it down). If you don’t know your final trip cost, estimate it high to be safe. You can always lower to the correct trip cost prior to your departure date. If it drops you to a lower trip cost range, you’ll get a partial refund. and
- The person (including non-traveling family members) with the medical condition has to be medically stable when you get your insurance and
- You must get your travel insurance in the first 14 or 21 days after your first trip payment date or no later than 24 Hours after you make your final Trip payment and
- You have to cover your trip’s full length.
By: Steve Dasseos
